Hay Feeder

2023-11-20

it aint pretty but she gets the food to the horses mouth.

Throwing hay on the ground to feed is tantamount to throwing dollar bills. Feeding small squares to 4 horse also can mean early rise, more refills, and late to bed making sure the boyz are topped off, particularly on cold nights.

I set about looking for something I could purchase ready made and found expensive but poorly made options and I figured I can make my own poorly made things, at a fraction of the cost and multitudes more time and effort. After some research I settled on using more of the easyfit system had used to make our bed frame, some awnings, and desk. They are a bit pricey compared to other methods, but it can scale on some projects to end up cheaper, and it is almost definitely more flexible as they can be reused over and over.

Standard galvanized fence posts from a metal yard can be had fairly cheap as well.

I got mostly discounted wood from homedepot where they have blemishes or really bad features, though for my use that was fine, and it was a fraction of the cost than undamaged new wood.

If you can assemble an Ikea bed, you can build this feeder…

I assembled the roof separately on the ground, using more off cuts to save money as well, so fit was less than ideal, but it was cheap. All assembled it has paid off multitudes. We pair it with a slow feed haychix net that really help cut down on waste. Depending on the quality of the bale we put in I would put the waste at an unheard of %5-10%. The boyz would basically like their plate on this thing with good hay. It also is fairly versatile. We can adjust the feed height if needed. Put solar cameras on the feeder. We also hang small feed nets sometimes as well when we had special diet considerations, were in between round bales.